Attorney’s fees are not proper in child-support modification orders

Resolving a split among the courts of appeals, the Court holds that Texas statutes do not authorize a trial court “to order a parent to pay attorney’s fees as additional child support in a non-enforcement modification suit.”

The majority opinion contrasted other parts of the family code, which do expressly permit attorney’s fees. “In light of the Family Code’s detailed scheme concerning awards of attorney’s fees in [other contexts], we believe it is significant that the Family Code is silent [about them for modification suits]”.

Justice Guzman wrote a concurring opinion (joined by Justice Lehrmann) that provided more context about why the Family Code provisions on attorney’s fees are so fragmented, which may help inform any attempts at a legislative fix. The concurrence ultimately agreed with the majority that, “in the absence of express statutory authorization,” fees were not available here.

Whistleblower Act: who is a law-enforcement official?

The Court applied its recent decisions in Gentilello and Farran, which had concluded that an employee making a report to an internal compliance officer was not itself a report to a “law-enforcement authority” to trigger the protections of the Whistleblower Act.

Like those cases, the Court concluded that this record “failed to show [that the plaintiff had] an objective, good-faith belief that the [school district] qualifies as an ‘appropriate law-enforcement authority’ under the Act.”